


The Act

by InlovewithStephenColbert



Category: Fake News, Fake News RPF, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (TV)
Genre: Coping, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Isolation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 22:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10728378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InlovewithStephenColbert/pseuds/InlovewithStephenColbert
Summary: "Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything." - Stephen ColbertThey all thought Stephen was the more stable one. The more well rounded human being. Obviously all the quirks and all the slightly troubling signs he gave were just part of the character. Stephen the person was fine. Jon the person? Less so.They were all wrong.





	The Act

 

If escapism were an art, Stephen would be its master. It was funny, they all thought Jon was the one who had issues, the one who couldn’t be classified as stable. Every crazy thing Stephen did came under the heading of “the character”, so surely Stephen - the person- was the more stable, well-adjusted of the two.

 

 

When Stephen was a young boy he learned a very important lesson. He watched his mother put a calm facade for all his siblings as she guided them through the tragedy of their father and brothers’ deaths, and heard her heart wrenching sobs at night and realised for the first time, the importance of masks. The importance of pretending.

 

 

He learned how to act like a normal, personable, well-adjusted human being when he was out in public. He took up comedy because he could say the truest and darkest things about himself on stage and as long as it made people laugh, nobody believed it.

When he moved in with Paul and Amy, the act became a full time thing and some days he forgot he was acting, forgot that he wasn’t really this wonderful, kind human being he pretended to be, forgot the hollow feeling in his chest. Just for those few moments, he felt peace. Joy.

Then reality would come rushing in as he stared at his face in the mirror and he would wonder why nobody else saw how hollow his eyes looked, how dead they were.

 

 

He married Evie - beautiful, wonderful Evie - because he loved her more than he could ever say. For a while the hollowness . . . went away. Sort of.

It didn’t go away exactly, but when she looked at him and saw what he hid from the world and still held him and kissed him with as much love - if not more - as before, it became bearable. She gave him joy, filling those hollow parts of him with her light and joy and love.

But he never let her see the full extent of how deep this. . .apathy went. He didn’t want to ever expose her to such darkness. He didn’t want to ever lose her to it too.

 

 

Sometimes he wondered if his mother knew. She would look at him with her loving eyes and put a hand on his shoulder and for a moment the feeling would vanish and he’d feel okay. Normal. Stable.

Then she would remove her hand and he’d feel a keen loss like someone had ripped out his heart and messed with his head all over again. He always swore to himself that he would never let her do it again. Nothing was worth that pain.

He’d always get her to do it again, just for that moment’s relief.

 

 

 

When he met Jon Stewart, he saw for the first time, a man who was clearly and openly struggling with life and yet, was never pitied or patronised for it. It was the first time he was forced to acknowledge that all his masks and acts and jokes were a shield to stop him from being pitied by people who perceived him as weak. Then Jon Stewart came swanning in and nobody thought of him as weak or pitied him and all of Stephen’s beliefs were destroyed.

After that, he tried to open up to Paul at a bar, but the alarm on his face and his insistence on taking away Stephen’s whisky stopped Stephen. They never spoke about it. He didn’t try again.

 

 

Jon Stewart invited him to have an opinion and do what he wanted. Jon Stewart told him to talk about things that he wanted to, crack jokes that he thought were funny and helped him decide to create his character.

Stephen wrote in all of his insecurities and all his fears as the characters’ - and then added in homophobia and a conservative outlook so it didn’t become too real - and showed it to Jon Stewart who took a long time to read it, before handing it back to him, and nodding. Stephen didn’t notice the subtle shift in his gaze. Slowly, somewhere along the way, Jon Stewart became Jon.

 

 

The first time Stephen became ‘Stephen’ and showed the world the darker parts of who he really was, while interspersing it with a comedic fear of bears to keep it from getting too real, he felt free. He felt free and exhilarated because now, finally, he could stop pretending for just a bit. Then he stepped off stage and listened to the other correspondents commend him for a wonderful bit of acting and he wondered if he had created his own downfall.

But that freedom and exhilaration kept calling him back, and he kept doing more.

 

 

 

One night, as he stayed in the office long after everyone else had gone he realised that he couldn’t get out of character. Oh sure the homophobia and the fear of bears slid away easily enough, and the hardcore republican beliefs were far easier to lose, but it was the real things he couldn’t hide anymore. The fear of abandonment, the need to always be in control, the obsession with having someone love him for who he was, the grief, the anger, the weakness. He couldn’t put his masks up again.

He sat there frozen and afraid for a long time until Jon walked in.

“Hey I just came to check why the lights were on -“ Jon stopped at the sight of Stephen sitting frozen with tears in his eyes.

 

“I don’t know how to get back to normal.”

 

He waited. Stephen waited for Jon to make his excuses and leave. But Jon just dropped his bag and pulled Stephen into a hug, kissing the top of his head. Stephen remembered his brothers doing the same thing, his father doing the same thing and wrapped his arms back around Jon.

The dam finally broke.

 

They never talked about it again- that night. But whenever Stephen was done with a bit, Jon was there to hold him and help him put his masks back up. When he started his own show, he dreaded going back to his dressing room and finding that Jon wasn’t there.

But Jon was right there, waiting for him with calm blue eyes and open arms.

 

 

 

He wished he could say that Jon fixed him. That he didn’t feel hollow anymore. But he couldn’t. because Jon was broken himself. Jon couldn’t fix Stephen.

 

But Jon could make him feel less lonely, less isolated. Jon could be there, just as bleary eyed and sleep deprived as Stephen and for a few precious moments Stephen could stop pretending to be happy.

For a few precious moments Stephen could talk about how hard it had been for him to meet the wounded soldier who had just returned from Iraq, when he had just finished talking to a politician who didn’t care about the enormous sacrifice these men and women were making.

He could talk about how he felt like a monster when he saw his friends and family laughing and enjoying themselves and couldn’t bring himself to feel a flicker of the joy they did. How he felt hollow and incomplete all the time, like there was something essential that he was missing.

He could talk about how he couldn’t bring himself to believe in God on most days, even though he still practiced for his children. He realised that if he did believe that everything that happened to him was part of some grand design, then the knowledge that an all-powerful entity hated him enough to make him suffer so much would crush him.

 

 

Jon would sometimes talk about how Nate would find joy so easily, in the smallest of things and would wonder when he had lost that ability. He’d talk about how he couldn’t sleep anymore, about how he felt like an outsider in his own family and Stephen would listen and he would understand, Because that’s what Jon did - he listened, and he understood. Then they’d hug and go to do their jobs and the meeting would tide them over until it was time for one of them to break again.

 

 

Jon once said that he didn’t think he had ever met someone as fucked up as Stephen. Not only was Stephen far more fucked up than usual, he also spent most of his life hiding it. What little did shine through the cracks was almost always attributed to his character.

“Don’t you ever get tired of not being yourself?” Jon had asked one weekend as they sat in his office in a studio void of people. Jon was on his fourth cigarette and Stephen was on his third glass of bourbon.

“I don’t know who I am, if I’m not pretending.”

Jon kept smoking, and Stephen poured himself another drink. What a pair they made, an alcoholic and a chain smoker - too cowardly to shoot themselves in the head and too tired to live. Stephen wondered which of them would succeed in killing themselves first.

 

 

Somedays Stephen didn’t know how he managed to keep this act up around his family. Then on particularly difficult days, John would tell him about a new book he read and Peter would tell him about school, and Madeleine would hug him and Evie would watch their favourite old movies with him, and he’d wonder if they truly were as ignorant as he liked to believe.

 

 

He got the Late Show. He got the Late Show and everyone was ecstatic but as he sat in Jon’s office Stephen wondered if it was worth it.

“I won’t get any respite now.”

Was he even a performer? Or did the character just do well because Stephen had enjoyed the freedom it gave him?

“Yes you will. You’ll do great buddy.” Jon smiled at him and his blue eyes were bright and hopeful. Jon hadn’t smoked in two years, and he looked good.

He looked happy.

Stephen suddenly realised that even if Jon hadn’t managed to fix him, Stephen had done a pretty decent job of fixing Jon. As he looked at his closest friend he realised that maybe it was time to let Jon think he had fixed Stephen too. Maybe things would be better that way.

 

Stephen smiled back and felt another layer of his mask come into place. When Jon’s smile widened Stephen knew he had done the right thing.

He ignored the hole in his chest as it got bigger and somehow more painful.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Please leave a comment! I'd love to hear from you.


End file.
